Re: Which language for aerospace engineering freshman?

[rod.chapman@praxis-cs.co.uk (Rod Chapman)]

spinningspider@3233.com (Sinning Spider) wrote in message news:<474f5457.0305310249.6163e00@posting.google.com>...
> Which language should an aerospace engineering freshman entering
> Purdue this Fall 2003 learn now?  Ada, C or Java?

Very difficult to answer!  What languages get taught in CS101
seems to be in a constant state of flux and the subject
of near-religious debate in CS education.  I'd recommend you
keep an open mind and learn as much as you can about as many
languages as you can, particularly focussing on the strengths
and weaknesses of each language with respect to particular
application domains.  In recruiting CS graduates here at Praxis,
I'd be looking for appreciation of the following application
domains, with some fluency in two or three:

Dynamic OO: Java, Smalltalk?
Design-by-Contract: SPARK or Eiffel
Domain specific: MATLAB (seems to be almost ubitquitous now in engineering)
Pure functional: Scheme or Haskell maybe?
Safety Critical: SPARK Ada, MISRA C
Real-Time: Ada95 Ravenscar profile.
Historical: ALGOL68, Pascal, Modula-[123], C etc. etc.

But that's for CS grads...For an aero-eng grad, I probably wouldn't
expect them to know about the functional and historical domains.
Don't wory of that seems alot - you've got 4 years, right?!?

Oh - For techies, I'd also look for at least some knowledge of at
least one modern assembler - many avionics programmes are
going to PowerPC for instance - and knowing your low-level stuff can 
never hurt.  (I'm slightly worried that many university CS programmes
don't seem to teach low-level architecture and assembler
any more at all...)

I will now take cover under my desk... :-)
- Rod